7. Salvation In The Field
via stripes.com
One of the daunting aspects of the war to U.S. troops was the difficult fact that, in order to fight Viet Cong guerrillas, they had to patrol an unfamiliar jungle, always on the lookout for danger and almost always desperately uncomfortable as well. It was not an “easy” conventional war of large formations of men moving across an open landscape with plenty of support and logistics right behind them. No, it was a dirty, “little” war of small-group combat out at the tip of the spear.
Here a sergeant of the 101st Airborne, one of America’s most famous army divisions, attempts to signal to a chopper for medevac. You can see the wounded soldier in the foreground grimacing in pain after their patrol has been ambushed and other soldiers, both wounded and healthy, looking up into the sky, hope and fear fighting for supremacy on their faces. The signaling sergeant is somewhat reminiscent of Willem Dafoe’s “good” lieutenant in Oliver Stone’s classic Vietnam War movie Platoon. Somehow I doubt that Stone was not aware of this powerful image.
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